Les Cartes de Destin
by Sythar
Summary: At the barricade Javert muses on fate and his attempts to avoid it throughout his past. Eventually AU, a highly fantastical treatment of characters and themes. Javert is a magician, Enjolras is probably a fairy, and Feuilly is adopted.
1. Bataleur

**Bataleur**

It was barely a shadow that moved across the strained floorboards in the half-deserted darkened wineshop. All movement was done in small flickers, as though seeking out certainty – yet hungry and insatiable, drinking in the left-over smells of gun-powder and blood and sweat.

Inch. Inch and another inch towards the old dirt-walker on the table, its generous years and over-full soul hovering ripe and ready above it.

The creature moved again, a sudden final surge towards the dead mortal, shadowy arms reaching out and a shadowy face suddenly clear in the guttering moonlight which filtered in through one shut and barred window. Gunpowder. Blood. The smells so tantalising – so delicious – and then frayed and fried into a burn if vicious holly, rowan, iron and something like…

HOOKS

The word came clear into the creature's mind even as it felt itself stopped and jerked ferociously backwards, bound thrice over from each of the four corners. It swore loudly in its native child tongue.

The other in the room, a tall man with a fierce, alert face – wolf-like and predatory – gave a brusque laugh. "And the same to your dam, and your dam's dam."

"Who are you?" The creature moved slightly, restricted by iron in its flesh. Hooks. Its face was beautiful, ethereal, desirable all at once. Pale and lovely in a touch of moonlight and it spoke French poorly in a thick accent that hailed from somewhere – old.

"No bericain to give y' that," the man was stood against a broad pillar, face mostly shadowed and arms pinioned. "What raw greenshod pony'd tell you his real, honest t' the good lord in heaven like a sainted aunt with her crosses and beads true Name while his hooks burn in your flank?"

"This is no sacred ground," the creature said, moving again. "This is no place banned by powers I must obey. Let me go, mortal, or as I am older than these walls I take your soul with his."

"You tell me once," the main drawled in a low gruff sing-song voice. "You tell me twice, you tell me three times over. Good for you. Very very good. I applaud you in my heart where it counts. Go ahead and try to take the soul of a bataluer."

There was a pause, and neither of them moved.

"Let me have him and I will free you."

"To eat me."

"To save you."

"Fine saving with your pretty white teeth in my throat. Try again."

It became more beautiful than ever, large grey moon eyes and dark lashes. "You know we can't lie, mortal man. Wizard."

"I note," the man said dryly. "You made no promises not to harm my venerable head or heart."

It grinned with sharp teeth. "I'll take your name from the air you breathe if you don't free me."

"Try," he yawned, his mouth huge and gaping. "Faith, I'm getting tired of saying that."

"Favre. Josef Favre."

"_Splendid_! Wonderful. Complete bullshit, but I look a Josef. Always knew it. It's the nose. And the eyebrows. Josef eyebrows, these." He straightened suddenly, very very tall in the darkness. "You, however, are Sal from the hills in Beaune, of the Rath of Five Stones. Unseelie from western windows come, my little friend. The door's east. You're out of place and stupider than an edict on washing laundry in the dark to pay no heeds to the tracings of the barricade. On Belenus's name himself, no less. Dordi dordi."

The unseelie thus named shrank and then swelled into a composition of dark angles, no less beautiful but completely lacking in light. Something shifted between them, and it moved forwards, teeth bared. It was breathing on the man's face when he drew his iron knife and jammed the blade up into its chest.

Inspector Javert – which was also not his real name – replaced his knife and drew out a long-stemmed pipe which he lit thoughtfully with the embers of the fairy. After a moment's pause, he rechecked the bans and spells on the room and the warding on the western window. Then he sat on the table and nodded to the dead man. "Still secure, M. Mabeuf."


	2. The Hanging Man

**A/N Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far. Please enjoy this first flashback to javert's childhood. It struck me as likely he speaks Occitan, so that pops up in this chapter along with a little smattering of romani chib and some argot.**

**The Hanging Man**

_1832 – Present_

"One would think they'd light a fire, though who's to heat? You don't need it. I think they're not fond enough of me. What do you think, Pere? Same, different, no one knows." Javert raised an eyebrow at his surroundings and inventoried his possible conversational partners on four walls, several benches, a piece of rope and a dead man. "Rats would be fun, of course," he added out loud amicable, blowing smoke towards the ceiling. He had taken the time to unbutton the collar of his shirt – which was off-off-white and stained with tobacco (not his own) and sweat (definitely his own), all for the sake of authenticity. La.

His nostrils flared broadly as he drew on the pipe and sketched a gesture with one hand. "Very clever, rats. Did you know – ah no, you wouldn't. I saw a rat and a lutin fight over a bone once. The rat won. Clever."

They settled into companionable silence for a time, the Inspector listening to footsteps coming and going and the dead man listening to nothing at all. Finally Javert tapped out his pipe and drew his mouth into a grin. "M. Mabeuf. Books. Money troubles. Ay – and a splendid finish to the top of the barricade with a flag – certain death. Nicely done. Very fine. I saw that in your fate three weeks back and you'd say maybe I should have told you. Funny enough fate's not something most want to know, not the real stuff." He made an explosive sort of noise through his nose – some parts growl and some parts horse-like snort. "Not 'tall dark stranger' and 'mysterious gifts' but real fate. Dead fate."

He dusted his knees and tilted his head to one side, listening. "We have one hour and fifty minutes. Or rather _I _do. It won't change a thing for you, you're done. But then everything will happen – every thing. Might as well have hung a sign on the wall saying 'Fate Comes To All Of Us Tonight – The Dead Kind' or less poetical: 'A Bullseye On Our Backs Would Have Been More efficient But Less Fun And After All We're Students'."

He sat back a little and rolled his shoulders, pulling a tangled ball of twine and three or four tattered cards from his pocket. Only the line of his fingers betrayed any agitation, quick repetitive nervous movements untangling and retangling the twine in patterns only he saw. After a moment he placed the first card flat. "Let me tell you about fate. You can't argue and the telling of words make them real. It all needs to be real tonight."

_1788 – St Mandrier Sur Mer_

_"Ieu sui Arnaut qu'amas l'aura_

_e chatz le lebre ab lo bou_

_e nadi contra suberna"_

The thing of carrying a fish – a large one – without dropping once while it beat against your chest is gills. He had all four fingers in the gills, and smelled of the sea and scales and bad bait. Bit not of fish. No, fresh fish just taken from the sea – it had no scent, not like the flat, sun-baked nose-scouring edginess that hang on the stones and markets around the wharf-front like a bad old veil. Old fish, that was the smell. One which had been hooked up out of the deep and allowed to die and then age after its death until it was a stinky grandfather.

The boy's fish smelled of sea water, salty brine and weeds. He took a better grip on it and ducked into a winding alley around the back of the Infirmerie Royale St Louis and out towards the poorer streets of St Mandrier. Someone might yet take the fish from him and he had caught it. Fair. Hooked it right through the lip and down into the gum… if fish had gums. Did they?

Of course… in honesty his hook had been dropped into a boat, sure. And the fish'd been dead enough that he hadn't needed bait. It just smelled of the bait in the boat. These were little details and they didn't bother him. Details didn't matter to anyone. Except the people who had too much time to think. The cats in the streets, the old dogs without homes, the birds in the rafters and he himself – to them the details of how a fish came onto his hook meant as little as shouting at a storm. Aital la vida. Anyone could tell you that.

He stepped into their house, pushing the door shut behind him as soft as he could so if dai was asleep again she wouldn't wake up and start shouting. There was one plate for these things, and he had to go on tiptoe to get it down, drawing it to his chest and then laying it on the wooden board his daron had set up as table last time he'd been out of the hospital. The fish went on the plate along with a knife. A real sharp one. Really really silver sharp. The fish lay there, whole, wholy dead, and full of guts. His mother – dai – said that truth sat in the guts like a little sulky god and you had to cut them out to get him to talk to you.

Once, when she'd had too much pastis, she had pulled him close and breathed amber all over his face and said that if a knife was stuck in his middle and pulled all the way up to his ears, then the home with the knife would see all his truth, future and past and because the boy was such a big big life when compared to a fish or a rabbit – all over the world besides. She had laughed and showed her black teeth and made him drink a little. It kept off the fairies, she said. And some days she would keep off the fairies with absinthe and a little sea water and rosemary to make her remember.

She had done that last night. This morning she had shouted and banged her hand against the bed. "Get me a fish, boy!"

So he had, and one with guts for her knife and cards.

"Boy – you back?"

She sounded half-asleep. The boy took the plate and ducked around the sail-cloth she'd hammered into the opening between their eating and their sleeping room. "Here, dai."

Dai was sitting on the bed, red-eyed and sour from drink. "Give it me."

He put his hand on top of the fish so it wouldn't slide off, and began to pass it over to her. Scales dug into his fingers a little and… the boy saw dark weeds like hair from dense wet sand. He saw life, fish-life, gills and fins working, small bubbles dancing near the surface and the way the water pressed and cupped around it like a cradle or a caress. He thought a million thoughts at once about water and breathing water and food and swimming and currents and enemies and man and air and sun and dark, and then he saw a hook – _fish do have gums – _and it stopped breathing and that was like being drowned in too much air but he didn't care at all because suddenly in the middle of the fish's life _he_… _himself_, a man all grown up and grey, was standing in front of him. Grim. Distracted.

The boy knew the place was Paris, and he knew the bridge was over the Seinne, that this was the Pont Notre Dame, without knowing how. It was night here, darker than dark, and he – himself – this angry man laid hat on the bridge and leaped to the water below. The boy cried ous as the water tugged at his hair for a horrifying moment.

It was so cold. And he died.

There was a sharp ache in his cheek, and as the house became solid real truth around him again he realised his dai had slapped him. She was crouched before him, kneeling on the fish – guts and all, the plate broken around their feet like a halo.

"What did you see?" Her voice was horrid, like she wasn't speaking, like she had been possessed by a terrible spirit and he sained himself in case… in case. "Boy. Boy, what did you see?" she took both his hands and pressed them, and he saw she was trembling and he sat down hard and wouldn't let himself cry. Boys didn't.

"I died," he said. With saying, it became truth. Words always did when they were spoken out loud, dai said. Even if for a really little while.

She swore then and let him go, her skirt billowing red and green as she moved to the small table in the corner and poured a glass. Drank it. Poured another. "You were always too old," she said, which the boy thought made no sense. How could he be too old when he'd always been exactly as old as he was?

He swallowed and wished for once that she would give him some. "Am I going to die?" He'd been very very old. But angry and sort of broken. He didn't want to be that broken and to fall… to jump… or had he been pushed? As he thought of it, all three seemed possible as though the only steadfast were he and the bridge and the horrible water.

"it's your fate, mainatge." His mother stood still and gazed at him and for a moment she was beautiful and young and full of life. "Listen, boy. I see my fate because I am the daughter of a drabarni and a bataleur. It is in my blood, as it is in yours. But I can do no more than see little things, I can sift for truth in tea and cards and guts but I have no real magic in me. Not a jot. Boy, you are your grandfather's child. You are a bataleur."

The boy took a breath. He could not even think about the word 'bataleur'. Not after the fish and the hooks and that bridge looming into his future. His mother looked scared, terrified, and he felt a buzz of fear rising into his gut.

True fear.

"We're running out of time." She drank again and he bit his lip as she shrank back to the old woman, saggy and soggy and lined with wrinkles, with patchy hair and black teeth. "There is a Guild of bataleurs – they see each one when his is born and come for him with he comes into his fate. They will come for you, boy, but they cannot have you until your father dies." She filled her pipe, her fingers trembling and tobacco scattering to the floor and into her glass.

The boy saw this and felt more frightened than ever. "Why?"

"The Guild can't be on a side of Law." Dai laughed and it sounded like she hadn't wanted to. "Law and Magic are forces against each other, it's always been like that. It means nothing – but in words and words mean a lot to magic. Your father's blood covers you and he's a robber. Until he dies you are safe, when he dies you will have to choose between them or the law. They will eat you, boy. Like worms eat a man from the guts out. Steal, kill, burn and cheat but never let them have you." She was staring at him, her eyes huge and fierce and her lips lax around her pipe.

She needed a reply so he nodded, unsure what he was agreeing to but knowing it was too important for their tiny house. People could come and take him on daron's death and eat him like a fish or like worms. He wanted to be sick, and the room stank of alcohol and smoke as his mother bent to kiss his cheek and puffed into his face.

"it's time for my fate now. Go see your father tomorrow, take him the usual." She held him close, a fierce sudden unusual hug and he remembered in a rush her holding him at night and rocking him to sleep while singing a soft tune.

"Maire…"

"Son. T'aimi."

"Maire, o fagas pas!" He had to keep her. He didn't know why or what she was doing but he knew in his gut in which there was only truth that he shouldn't let her go.

"Fate, boy." She laughed, exultant and wondrous and alien. "You can't escape it. It's not worth trying."

He reached for her but she pushed him off and ran from the house even as he yelled out _torna!_ After her. He stood to follow, but the world gave a sick spin around him and his breath ebbed away. She wasn't coming back. She was leaving and he couldn't understand it…

Someone screamed out in the street and the boy fainted. He had seen his mother's fate and she had died.

_She walked into the road in front of a horse and was ridden down._

_She was smiling when she died. The rider said she had stood there. She hadn't tried to get out of the way. _

People told him this in passing. The baker had known his mother well – his big sweaty face redder than ever as he explained things in small words for the boy. The boy thought about making him be quiet by telling him he had seen them together in bed. I saw you, monsieur. I saw you and my mother and may I have some soap for my eyes because the picture hasn't gone away yet. Perhaps later he would. It might be good for some francs if the baker didn't want Mme Baker to know.

He nodded anyway and took the bread for free from the store without trying. Dai would have liked that. She said crying wasn't good for anything if you didn't get paid for it.

The bread went in a basket with fish and old clothes. Like every month. The bread would go to debts along with the tobacco hidden in it so none of the guards would take it first. The fish would be eaten, all smoked into dry skin-like strips to keep longer. The clothes would be stolen after a night or two. Prison was another place where details didn't matter unless they were details of who owed who. The boy understood the prison.

He dropped into a boat going over to the city and the bagnes and no one said anything. The boy thought this would be because 'my mother is dead' was practically etched on his forehead. It suited him, the silence. He could have walked, but he didn't want the ground. He wanted to float on the sea and think of fish.

Saul Bernois rowed, his door-handle nose dripping like it always did. He was a fool, dai had said. He told his true name to everyone and the pretty folk had taken his wits and his teeth. It was why the boy had always been the boy even to himself in his head. If you thought your true name loud enough sometimes the folk could hear it and would have you.

He wondered what the pretty ones had done with M. Bernois' teeth all the way to the bagnes.

He got in easy enough. Dai had left out the money to give the guards and they'd seen him alone there before. The boy knew the way. It was this fact and the fact that there were a lot of ragged boys who ran errands coming in and out that was the reason no one saw him as him until he was at the big room of bunks which his daron shared with the others of his ward.

"Just ten minutes back," a guard was saying in a hushed voice. There were a lot of guards there. A lot more than ever before.

"I didn't think he loved her."

"Well, you know things can take them that way sometimes."

"Didn't he have a kid?"

"Hey!" a loud voice boomed almost at his ear. "Don't let the boy see!"

Two of the guards turned, startled, and it was already too late. The boy could see through the open heavy door, and he moved forwards a little. Hanging feet dangling. Up further was his daron's head tied to a bar with a length of cloth. It was all purple and his tongue was black. The boy knew that his dad couldn't be alive and have a tongue that black.

He dropped his basket and the guards pulled him away far too late to do any good.

1832 – present

The Inspector tapped his card, the hanging man. "It means making a decision between two paths – ironic, eh? I still think one of the chevals in his ward did him in. He was hardly a sentimental soul. Delightfully, one of the adjutants took a liking to me after I burst into hysterics and I talked him into keeping me on. He was Austrian before that was a bad thing to be, and you may note I speak with a slight accent courtesy of him. Bataleur Charles came by after three days to take me and I told him I was with the prison so he couldn't have me. He tried to argue, but I didn't want my life taken out of my control. When he said he was from Paris, that was the final damning detail. No Paris for me. I did put a tiny curse on him, though. His nose hairs still grow too fast."

Aital la vida. (that's life)

mainatge (child)

Maire (mother)

T'aimi (I love you)

o fagas pas (don't do it)

torna (come back)


	3. The Star

The Star

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions. – Shakespeare

_Two Years Previous to The Present_

"Aren't you finished yet?"

"It takes time. Be patient."

"I am infinitely patient."

"Hah. You complain if dinner is a little tiny little bit late."

"Your definition of a liiiittle tiny little bit late is three hours past midnight, old man."

"Look out who you call old, fiston." The chair creaked loudly as Javert rocked it right back to the edge of tipping and raised an eyebrow at the boy half between a question and a warning.

The boy grinned suddenly. "Your hair is even greying as I wait. I tell you this is taking too long, look in the mirror now if you don't believe me."

He snorted, a huge explosive noise. "Sheer exaggeration. Go be useful and build up the fire."

"You spend more time in front of a fire than catching criminals, grandpere." He moved anyway, quick practical movements like always, leaving his cap and coat on the chair. It was part of their routine, a sort of message that he would be there when Javert returned from hunting. Good. Sometimes that was a nice change from Monant alone, who was seated in her space on the floor, licking one paw and flicking glances between them speculatively. Like any cat she was the worst possible pet for a republican, which was why he had inherited her when the boy moved out. _She can be your familiar._

At least she hadn't been a bat.

Or a large toad.

Javert drew his coat further around his shoulders. The room was cold. It was almost impossible to warm up, no matter what wood was on the fire. Even a touch of hawthorn or rowan was useless, oc? Oc. Still it was better than the Prefecture.

In his palm rested a large iron fish hook and he spun it three times with his fingers and breathed on it. Each of the corners had been called into this one, which was good for anchoring it when it was stuck into a large magical hide.

For strong magic, and this would be strong Cross My Palm And Don't Lie To Your Mother magic, there had to be a little blood. It was one of those quintessential things which had enabled the Guild to take its perky little bleached white boned stranglehold on Magic Proper and The Lesser-Spotted Bataleur. Imagine like so – you want rain because you farm and so you need a cow to slaughter so the magic can be done. No cow? No rain. No rain? No cow. But children there is hope on the sunrise-golden horizon! A charmingly polite group of tyrants who have blood of any type you might need or want in neat little vials in neat little rows in neat little storerooms!

All is saved.

There was something definitively ironic in the world being run by a monopoly in blood – and the roots of that tree ran deeper than most wanted to examine. War – blood. Execution – blood. Slaves – blood. Tyrants – blood. Dig deep enough, enfants, and you see magic beneath every evil sooner or later.

The ramble of his thoughts ended on that sharp crag as Monant gave a disdainful bat of her paw and rolled a dead mouse – a small one – to his feet. She watched it for a moment with the intensity of a professional, saw it was indeed no longer breathing, and lost interest.

"She's getting better at that."

"Aren't you building up the fire?" He picked it up and found it still warm.

"I have. Who cursed your grave with winter?"

An eyebrow. "And who knows where my grave is, boy?"

"Water. Bridge. Generally river-like in aspect, currently slightly flooded."

"You know, I would like to think you'd dredge me up and have me properly buried if it comes to that." The mouse fell over in his palm, legs splayed, and he nicked it with the hook, smearing the iron as liberally as he could. "I don't want to feed the fish, I'm not partial to that much charity."

"Bullets," the boy said succinctly, and there was a moment of silence where things were loudly unsaid and just as loudly retorted to. "Why are you so damn cold all the time? Wearing that coat, burning yourself… people will talk."

"People always talk. It's the third constant truth of the universe."

A snort. "You should tell me the other truths sometimes."

"Learn them yourself." Javert allowed a grin, and wiped his fingers clean on a spotty old handkerchief. "No one taught me."

"You knew it all already."

They sat in a less loud silence as he wound the end of the hook in eternity knots. "There. Done. Examine if you like."

"What are you hunting?" The boy took the hook in hands coloured every hue of sea and sun. "Another unseelie?"

"Nuckelavee."

A sharp intake of breath. "Here?"

"It's out of its way."

"Are you planning on telling it as such?" Ah, there's the loud unsaid said things again.

"Oc, of course. I will explain to his large yellow teeth that there is difference between Paris and the seas of Scotland. I'm sure the creature will be utterly surprised and beg pardon to the bitti children its eaten."

The boy put his cap on. "Do you ever try talking to the fair folk?"

Which ones? The unseelie or the seelie? The nukelavee or the brownie? What kind of unspecific questions have you taken to asking in these highbrow meetings of political fancy of yours? "Once or twice," Javert drawled out ridiculously, taking the hook back and pocketing it. "Then they tried to eat my eyes and I took an irrational dislike to them. We've talked about this before, I'm certain."

"You kill them for being what they are."

"Oc, here's where you say your piece on how evil and tyrannical my practices are, then I say my piece on how logical I really am, we end up raising our voice and disturbing the neighbours and you take me off your Christmas gift list. Very familiar." Too familiar. He stood with a snort. The boy's coat was still over the back of the chair which meant he was _thinking_ of being there after.

"you could take me with you this time."

Another familiar conversation. Child, just because I can see parts of the future does not mean I constantly want to be able to predict our shouting matches. "There are more efficient ways to get yourself killed, boy. If you're so offended by my discrimination, then go home to your… what are we calling it?"

"Lover."

"Better than 'mistress' like it was last month. More ambiguous. Well done you."

This earned him a sulky look and the boy pulled on his coat. "Leave him out of it, old man."

There was sudden knife-like truth between them, and Javert saw his boy and the other boy at the very end of their paths. Damn young love, he thought. Damn it and all its poetical trappings. You bitti children and your foolish foolish games. "He's going to die."

A pause, the boy smiled wryly. "You live five streets from your bridge, grandpere. Don't start."

All foolishness, games and none of them listening. Javert shook his head. "none of you know anything."

"What's the truth of the universe then?"

A crisp cocky smile from each of them, patching the holes in the silence. "No one says the truth, boy. No one knows how."

"I'll come with you tonight, then, and see it for myself."

"If you want." He shrugged. "Steer clear of the teeth. They are the pointy white things."

The two of them left and said nothing because like was so usual now there was simply too much to say – in the dark. Beneath the stars which had told their futures before they were born. As always.


End file.
